. .. PSL for Connor | Seen But Never Heard, Buried Underground .. .

[konstant]

      It's not unprecedented for the remaining megapolises to need to work together on one problem or another, but merely exponentially rare as the planet nosedives ever faster towards burning out completely.  If someone is desperate or stupid enough to risk the great chasms of distance between one and another of the controlled biomes left standing, well.  Godspeed typically.

     It's even rarer still for two rival models of synthetic humanoids to be required - no, requested - to work together, but K supposes it had to happen eventually given the rising percentage of the population that's either replicant or android or something other than human.  Everything with the ability to reason or make decisions, however base, has the potential to become unruly.  It was only a matter of time before unified efforts to control them would need to be worked out.

    Be nice, but keep charge, Joshi had said before clearing his spinner for takeoff.   Yes, Madam, K had said, and now he's here in the Detroit office, waiting patiently to meet the first partner he's ever had that might actually fit the definition.  He's been paired with human officers before but they were never equals, never working together - more like K was a piece of equipment that had been checked out to them for a shift, with as much regard given.  Maybe this will be different, he thinks.

    Probably not, but maybe.  He shrugs the collar of his heavy duty coat higher against his neck, shoves his hands deeper in the pockets, and tries to figure out what that smell he can't identify is.

Comments

[konstant]

K hadn't protested when he was given the marks, of course, even if he's privately annoyed at the altercation to his duty coat. It doesn't matter. It can be altered at any time by anyone with the authority to do so and it doesn't matter whether he approves of it or not, so he doesn't say anything other than, "Yessir," he'll ell his handler.

The rest feels surreal but then, holograms - and that's what he assumes the majority of what he's seeing is, if not synthetic in every way that matters - frequently do. He's more put off by the open skies than he ever has been the forty story tall advertisements that occasionally sweep through a crowd, but he's good at not showing it. That's what he's looking at, though, when he hears his designation and turns to see Connor.

"Thank you," he offers politely, accepting the coffee even as he looks over the android. He wants to ask if that means androids can't but, for the moment anyway, it's not important.

"Is anyone else coming, or will it just be the two of us?"

[assignedcopatbirth]

Everything is wildly fake. Homeowners Association By Way Of Mussolini. It is very important that the city look good and high-tech and clean and orderly and pleasant.

"Just us. I am a police assistant prototype, capable of wirelessly receiving orders while in the field. CyberLife prefers discretion on this matter."

As much discretion as they can get, considering the police have gone over CyberLife's heads to force them to work with a specialist.

"Do you have a preferred title that I should address you by?"

He is, at the least, a guest - it is easy to find protocol that dictates [Make A Good Impression To Outsider].

[konstant]

K's existence straddles a lot of tricky lines and boundaries. He's a replicant whose function is to think and act independently and unsupervised. He's an officer with all the authority of one, but without the rights and authority of a human; he's a government asset and a Wallace intellectual property. The Detroit PD has called him in from the LAPD, and have now given him a representative of a rival commercial civilian company to facilitate his investigation.

He's not unaware of this. He is, however, possessed of his own protocols when dealing with the overall general public and a guest in another metropolis specifically.

Great. "All details being gathered for the case are confidential regardless," he says, which is true. Until it's not, but that's not technically his call to make. "My official title is Officer KD6-3.7. Those familiar with me typically shorten this to K for expediency."

[assignedcopatbirth]

"We gonna trust Wallace's kid not to be reporting everything it can get its hands on back to Daddy?" a technician at CyberLife had asked, three days ago.

"What did I tell you about asking me stupid questions?" his boss had answered, without putting down her cup of tea.

"Not to."

"And what did I tell you about saying Daddy in that tone of voice?"

"...Definitely not to."

"Officer," Connor says, pleasantly. Designation registered. "I look forward to working with you. I'm sure we'll make a great team."

Connor attempts a smile. It doesn't go well.

"The crime scene where the android shot its owner and took his daughter hostage is several neighborhoods over. Although the defective android was destroyed, the Detroit Police Department is concerned that it is part of a larger pattern. Would you like me to show you the apartment where the murder happened?"